Olena Kovalenko
|history= Olena Kovalenko was born just outside the city of Kalush in Ivano-Frankivs'k oblat, Ukraine, the daughter of a factory worker and a teacher. Displaying a keen eye for detail and excellent hand-eye coordination as an adolescent, she engaged in a variety of athletics, ranging from parkour and cross-country running to archery and various team sports. She particularly excelled as an archer, and went so far as to make the Ukrainian Olympic team in the 2008 Summer Games, where she upset the South Korean favourites and took the gold. However, the Ukrainian government implemented a hardline anti-mutant policy and began mandatory x-gene testing and registration of its citizens. The authorities discovered she carried the active gene and eventually deduced that her extraordinary athletic success was a direct manifestation of that gene. The government then fabricated an enhancement drug scandal around her as an excuse to retire one of their most promising young athletes from major competition. She was subsequently shipped off to one of the many so-called registration facilities (later called federal prisons and ultimately revealed to the international community as concentration camps to rival those of Nazi Germany) along with countless other young mutant women. Olena spent 3 years in a concentration camp outside Radcha near the Belarus boarder before she was shipped to the Ukrainian army garrison at Poznyar, nearly half the country away. There, crammed into a cargo container with dozens of other mutant women, she awaited her death via the gas chambers she could smell nearby. She, and all of the other mutants imprisoned there were rescued by a small contingent of X-Men and escorted to an ostensibly safe area. The safety was short-lived, however. Olena and Tetyana, a friend she made at Radcha, fled across Ukraine, north to Minsk in Belarus, pursued all the way by agents of the Ukrainian army. In Minsk, the pair met with one of Tetyana's cousins, who, frightened by the fact they were mutants, betrayed them into the hands of the Russian mob. From there, the pair were shipped off to New York City in America, prisoners of a different sort, now. Ultimately, Tetyana was sold into prostitution and shipped off to Gotham, while Olena remained trapped in Manhattan (Lower Metropolis). Eventually, Olena managed to escape her captors. After several weeks living on the streets, constantly on the run, she was rescued by Magneto and Mystique, who introduced her to the safety of Mutant Action Center and agreed to help her find and rescue Tetyana. Unfortunately, the rescue operation was a bust. Tetyana was arrested in Gotham for prostitution and put into the hands of Immigration Services, who intended to ship her back to Ukraine. Tetyana attempted her own escape from Immigration authorities and was killed when an officer panicked upon encountering her mutant powers. Olena and Mystique arrived just a little too late to help her. At Tetyana's grave, Olena vowed that no other mutant would suffer the indignities she and her friend had suffered, so long as it was within her power to stop it. That mission is now the driving force in her life. (The log that inspired this character can be found at: http://heromux.wikia.com/wiki/2012-07-28_Return_to_the_Ukraine) }} Category:Character Category:OC Category:Neutral Category:Unregistered